The introduction of video services into inmate housing and common area locations for the purposes of video visitation and/or video calling has introduced an unanticipated issue related to what details are conveyed through the video to whoever is viewing it at the other end. Inmate housing environments simply were not designed with the expectation that those outside the facility would have a camera inside the housing units. As such, back ground details could include showers, bathrooms, interiors of cells, or just the general population going about their day. Additionally, other inmates who know they are on camera often act up and cause disruptions which can escalate and become safety issues.
In prior systems, the camera component of the video visitation/call system reveals more than is intended and much more than is desired. A means of not showing what is happening behind inmates participating in video visitations/calls is needed in order to safe guard the privacy and promote the safe use of video services provided within inmate housing areas.
Given the infancy of the use of video services within the correctional institution setting, previous methods of resolving the issue resorted to placing the video terminals outside of the general inmate population. This is undesirable as it negates one of the prime advantages of video visitations; namely, to provide visitations without having the security and administrative issues associated with moving inmates from housing locations to visitation locations.
One alternative solution is to design the housing units in such a way that the video terminals face an innocent area. This is impractical since most correctional institutions were constructed decades before and reconstruction would be too costly. Also, such floor plan designs will tend to rely on designing “nooks” to house the video services but such “nooks” are difficult for correctional officers to monitor and thus provide locations for violent and/or illicit activities to take place.
One previous technology uses facial recognition to “lock in” on the facial features of the inmate and blur everything but those features. This approach suffers as the inmate moves around and has the disadvantage of blurring much of the face and or torso of the inmate thus leading to an unsatisfactory visitation experience.